


December 25th

by startrekkingaroundasgard



Series: 25 days of ficmas [25]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas Dinner, F/M, Fake Marriage, First Christmas, Mistletoe, Sleepy Cuddles, the power is out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 01:20:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17254940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startrekkingaroundasgard/pseuds/startrekkingaroundasgard
Summary: Clint and the reader celebrate their first christmas together but the power’s out and it's a disaster. There’s a lot of cuddles and mistletoe makes an appearance too, though, so it isn't completely terrible.Part of Mr and Mrs Jones (the whole fic can be found on tumblr, but I will put it up on here soon)





	December 25th

You should have known not to get your hopes up. If there was one thing you’d learned over the past few months it was that giving Clint any kind of responsibility was a dangerous thing. Why you’d believed that he could be trusted cooking the turkey was beyond you. It was a moment of madness. He’d fluttered his eyelashes and even got down on his knees to tell you that he was absolutely capable of taking a dead bird out the freezer, showing it in the oven and checking on it every hour.

Unfortunately, and completely unsurprisingly, Clint got distracted. In fairness, to start it had actually been with useful jobs. Christmas Eve, as the turkey was cooking away in the oven, he’d cut all the vegetables, prepared the pigs in blankets and even made a Christmas pudding (which was in fact a regular coffee cake decorated with a sprig of holly and some icing sugar, but it was the thought that counted).

He’d been so busy preparing the rest of the dinner for Christmas day, advocating a rare and unusual attitude for him that it was better to have everything ready than just wing it, that he completely forgot about the bird. Even though he’d had to open the oven to bake his cake, Clint had barely thought about the turkey. After all, it was barely half way through its cooking time and nothing was on fire. Yet. 

The real problem came when he left the kitchen and joined you in the living room. You were watching your traditional Christmas Eve films when he curled up at your side, resting his head sleepily in your lap. You automatically began playing with his hair, running your fingers through the short lengths and taking great pleasure in making a mess of his perfectly styled do. Within ten minutes, he was snoring and you were too comfortable to bother moving. You draped a blanket over him and returned your attention to the film, eventually drifting off yourself.

When you woke the next morning, you were shivering. You frowned, convinced that you’d not turned the underfloor heating off before falling asleep. As you looked around the living room, you noticed that none of your tech was working. The TV screen was black and none of the Christmas fairy lights were on, which honestly made the tree look a little depressing.

Careful not to wake Clint, you stretched your arm out and tried to switch on a nearby lamp. The switch clicked but there was no light. Extricating yourself from beneath the sleeping lump on your lap, you traipsed over to the window and looked down the street to see that it wasn’t just your house; it looked like absolutely no-one had power.

Pulling your jumper sleeves down and over your hands, you wrinkled your nose at the odd, sharp smell in the air. It took you a moment to realise what it was. Even before you opened the over you knew what you’d see but it still caught you by surprise. There, on the middle shelf, was your turkey burnt to a crisp. Who’d have guessed it was possible to kill the poor thing twice.

You suddenly felt very grateful for the power outage as, without it, your entire house would probably have caught fire and burnt down. That didn’t mean you weren’t going to kill Clint for this, though.

Crouching down in front of the sofa, you shook his shoulders to wake him. You were stunned into silence when his first instinct was to lean forward and kiss you. He brushed his lips so gently over yours that you could almost have imagined it, if not for the fact that he did it again and whispered lazily, “Good morning. Merry Christmas.”

“Uh, okay. Yeah. Merry Christmas, Clint.”

“So what’s the plan for to… This isn’t the bedroom. What am I doing down here?”

“You’re right, it’s not. You - we - fell asleep on the sofa last night.”

“Cool,” he said, still half asleep. Clint pushed himself upright and blinked a few times before frowning, noticing the lack of flashing lights and the disconcerting quiet in the room. He tapped his hearing aids to make sure that they were still working, confused when he found they were. “What’s going on?”

“Powers out for the entire street.”

“Oh. Fair enough. What’s that smell?” He wrinkled his nose and it took him less than two seconds to realise where it was coming from. Clint leapt up from the sofa and ran into the kitchen, slumping against the island when he saw the black, charred lump of meat which had once been a turkey.

He hit his forehead on the worktop and kicked the nearest cabinet so hard that you feared he’d broken his toe. Clint barely seemed to notice, though, mumbling over and over, “God, Y/N, I’m sorry. I just wanted to prove I could do something useful and I screwed it and now Christmas is ruined. I’m such an idiot.”

“Hey,” you breathed, rubbing circles on his back. “It’s alright.”

“I can’t do anything without screwing it up. I’m just a waste of space.”

“Don’t you dare say that, honey. You are absolutely not a waste of space. Come on, help me set a fire and I’ll make you some coffee.”

“No power. No coffee machine. How can you make coffee without Lottie?”

Shaking your head at the fact that that was what he’d decided to name the latest coffee machine - admittedly it was better than deja brew or bean-jamin but it still wasn’t great - you pulled him upright and wrapped your arm around his waist. Hoisting him up on to his feet, you gently said, “That’s what the fire is for, dear. Humanity has survived for thousands of years without machines to make their coffee. We can certainly manage a day.”

It took awhile but you eventually got a fire going and even managed to make Clint his coffee. His mood brightened considerably after that first cup, and more still after the second, but he continued to apologise for the turkey disaster. He couldn’t see that it didn’t really matter either way; if the turkey had survived, you still wouldn’t have any vegetables or potatoes to go with it with the oven out of commission (you refused to eat boiled vegetables because it brought back memories of horrendous family dinners from when you were a kid).

You spent the morning cuddled up beside the fire, wrapped up in blankets and playing board games. Clint thrashed you at monopoly but you got your own back in scrabble, beating him by over 100 points.

Sporting cheap and tacky Santa hats, you exchanged your gifts, none of which were serious presents. The best gift Clint gave you was a $69 gift card for his favourite pizza place; the worst was a pair of socks (from his own drawer, thankfully washed) with holes in them. You in return had given him a box of pens to replace the ones he’d lost or broken over the past few months, some coconut scented hand lotion and a tub of the strawberry body scrub he finished last week.

When the time came for Christmas dinner, it truly was something unforgettable. Clint hacked away at the turkey carcass in search for any meat which had survived the cremation while you boiled some water over the fire and lovingly prepared two portions of instant noodles.

“We’ve got sausage casserole, which is honestly just a gloopy gravy with a single piece of pork fat in it, or the equally exciting curry flavour, which looks a little too close to vomit coloured for my person tastes and smells not unlike a public toilet. So,” you asked with a smile. “Which would prefer?”

“Well, they both sound delicious,” Clint smirked, sitting down on the floor beside you and presenting a plate with the few salvaged slithers of turkey. “I think I’ll have to try them both.”

Pushing the bowls towards him, you said, “Be my guest. I’m honestly a little scared to eat either.”

“But you’re willing to let me risk death to prove they’re edible?”

“We both know that you’ve put far worse into your stomach.”

The faces he made while taste testing the noodles were absolutely the best Christmas present you had ever received. He pushed the brown, goopy noodles back towards you and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “They’re the better ones, I suppose.”

“Why are you giving them to me, then?”

“Because it’s Christmas and you’re meant to do nice things for people. If you keep complaining I’ll take them back.”

You threw your hands in the air and took the bowl, wrinkling your nose at the smell. Under his intense stare, you forced yourself to take a spoonful and immediately regretted it. “Nope, can’t do it! There some pizza in the freezer which has probably half defrosted by now. If we stick it over the fire then it might be cooked by midnight.”

Clint let out a sigh of relief, dramatically dropping his spoon back into his bowl. “You have no idea how glad I am that I don’t have to eat this shit. You want me to make you a turkey sandwich? There’s some bread in the cupboard - might be a little mouldy but we can just pick it off. And there’s still the cake; I didn’t screw that up.”

He returned a few minutes later with two turkey sandwiches. The bread was spread with strawberry jam as he couldn’t find the cranberry sauce but by this point you really didn’t care. It just made you laugh and really still tasted far better than the instant noodles had so you weren’t complaining.

After you finished your Christmas ‘dinner’, Clint suggested, “My laptop should still have some charge. We could watch a film, if you like?”

“That sounds great,” you smiled. As he ran upstairs to grab it from the bedroom, you rearranged the cushions on the floor to make the perfect pile. Laying back, you couldn’t help but think how, despite being disaster after disaster, this might be the best Christmas you’d ever had. It didn’t take a genius to work out why, either.

Clint.

Everything the disaster of a man had done for you today, from his terrible turkey and jam sandwiches to his ridiculous presents, brought a smile to your face and made your insides feel all… squiggly. The harder you tried to squash those feelings, push them down and ignore them like a sensible person, the stronger they became.

You started to remember every single time that he’d done something just because he knew it would make you smile. All the calming touches. Every time he’d kissed you. God, you wanted to kiss him again. Maybe it was just the Christmas spirit. Maybe it was more than that. It hardly mattered, though.

Damn him.

Scrambling around you managed to pin a sprig of mistletoe above the fireplace before diving back onto the pillow barricade and make it look as if you were completely cool and collected. If he noticed your flaming cheeks then he didn’t say anything, instead just smiling at the cushions on the ground and taking a place right up against your side.

He set the laptop up and leaned back, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and pulling you comfortably against his chest. Clint slowly trailed his fingers up and down the length of your arm, the gentle movements meant to relax you but only serving to rile you up further. You could barely focus on the film, your mind too busy imagining what it’d be like to kiss him again.

“You’re not watching the movie,” Clint whispered, his lips hovering right over your ear.

“I’ve seen it before.”

“I know; it’s your favourite.” He chuckled quietly, the vibrations against your skin making the lump in your throat all the more impossible to ignore. Clint trailed a line of kisses down your neck, pausing over the sensitive spot on your collarbone. A silent moan escaped your lips when he nipped at the delicate skin. “Tell me to stop, baby, and I will.”

“Don’t you dare,” you mumbled, rolling over and straddling him. Crashing your lips together, Clint laced his fingers through your hair and tugged hard to draw another whimpering moan from your mouth.

You rolled your hips in retaliation, taking his lower lip between your teeth and sucking gently until he was begging for more. You kissed him hard, almost bruisingly, as you explored each others bodies. Each touch, desperate but somehow painfully restrained, sent sparks flying and you were breathing hard, feeling dizzy and a little overwhelmed.

Clint’s dug his fingers into your hips, trying to chase your kiss as you pulled back teasingly, before suddenly flipping you over onto your back. You were trapped under his strong body but definitely weren’t complaining. He lowered himself to kiss you again but he held himself back, his lips close enough to brush against your but not quite enough to be satisfy either of your burning desires.

He traced his fingers up from your hip, over the curve of your breast, all the way up your neck and to your jaw, butterfly light touches which had you panting beneath him. Clint never took his eyes off of you as he watched the way you responded to every touch, figuring out how best to drive you absolutely crazy. Every time you drew a sharp breath, his touch igniting a fire in your core, he would clench his jaw like this was testing his own resolve as much as yours. 

It was your resolve that broke first. You knew he’d likely tease you about it later but in that moment you really didn’t care. You slipped a hand around his neck and pulled him down to you, peppering light kisses over his lips. The fire inside still burned bright but you wanted to take it slow for a while, savour the moment in case this was the last one you got.

Eventually, though, you broke away. Clint rolled off of you and returned to his earlier spot by your side, wrapping his arms around you again and gently kissing your temple. The film was still playing and you tried to focus back on the story but couldn’t tear your attention from Clint’s fingers, playing with a short strand of hair by your ear.

“That’s very distracting,” you murmured. “You’re very distracting.”

“Me? A distraction? Well, obviously. I am amazing.”

You smothered a laugh, rolling your eyes at his smug confidence. It was so different from this morning, when he’d convinced himself that he was a waste of space. Your heart physically hurt when you twisted your neck to meet his gaze and, instead of a cheeky light in his eyes, you saw that same vulnerability from before.

Planting a kiss on his collar bone, you snuggled up against him, pulled a blanket over you both and said, “Yes, you are. Now, please shut up and let me enjoy my film.”

His muscles relaxed and he murmured a quiet, “Yes, Ma’am.”

You stayed tangled together on the floor until his computer finally died - 2 minutes before the end of the film, of course. Neither of you had the energy to move up to the bedroom, so you simply let your eyes fall shut, muttering soft “Merry Christmas”’s as you slowly drifted away.


End file.
